White Mughals by William Dalrymple

BIG William Dalrymple fans here!

This book was my foray into his work and I’ve only enjoyed every book since (each deserves its own post). I still regret that day, 8 years back in NYC, I missed his reading of then published book with Anita Anand, Koh-i-Noor, because of a run-away meeting and a delayed train. 

Anyhoo… White Mughals! Dalrymple is a historian and one of his specialties is the East India Company. This book is about James Achilles Kirkpatrick, a British Resident in the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1798, who falls in love and overcomes many obstacles to marry Kahir un-Nissa, a Mughal noblewoman and a direct descendent of Prophet Muhammed. It reads like a great nineteenth-century novel, set against a backdrop of political intrigue, religious and familial disputes, seduction and betrayal but it’s non-fiction… it’s a remarkable story about a pivotal moment in time when the British colonisers in India who “went native”, like our Mughal Kirkpatrick or Hindoo Stuart, a source of embarrassment to the Company and the Crown, were ousted and a new breed of colonisers took the reins. And the rest, as we know it, is <actual> history. 

If you are a history buff and want to learn about a moment in time that is left out of the books, you won’t stop till you have finished all 395 pages. While this is a tragic tale and we know how it ends, it’s a hopeful one. That clashing cultures, societies, and religions can coexist, appreciate, and learn from one another. Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? 

“Even today, despite all the progress that has been made, we still have rhetoric about ‘clashing civilisations’, and almost daily generalisations in the press about East and West, Islam and Christianity, and the vast differences and fundamental gulfs that are said to separate the two. The white Mughals - with their unexpected minglings and fusions, their hybridity and above all their efforts at promoting tolerance and understanding - attempted to bridge these two worlds, and to some extent they succeeded in doing so. As the story of James Achilles Kirpatrick and Khair un-Nissa shows, East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism, and fear drive them apart. But they have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again.”

---

A favourite quote from the book